PREMIER MANAGER 98 PS1 Review |PS1 Soccer Management Simulator|

The original PlayStation had no shortage of quality sports and soccer titles that were released during its lifespan. 

But while there was a multitude of various different entries in the series, there would also be some notable management sims that would also start to become popular on the system also during the late 90s. 

With one such title which is in my own personal opinion, probably considered to be one of the best and most popular management sims pretty much of all time and also on the PlayStation and that is Premier Manager 98 that originally saw a release on the PC in late 1997 and was later released on the PlayStation during the midpoint of 1998 and it would be developed by Dynamic multimedia and published by Gremlin interactive and the game would also be the fifth entry in the Premier manager series overall as the series had originally started off life on the PC and was quite popular. 

And some of the most notable aspects about this game is that it takes direct influence and uses a lot of elements along with various visuals and qualities with using the same graphics engine that was seen in Actua Soccer 2 which also repraised the role of Barry Davis providing commentary throughout all of the games focusing on various team names, player names and all of the various elements and the dynamics that make up an actual game of football. And at the time it was really cool because it was very lifelike and in my own honest opinion Barry Davis is one of my favorite football commentators of all time. 

He just had such a unique voice and he stood out amongst many other commentators at the time and his voice with this series of games really suited the whole aesthetic that date back even to the very first actua soccer game that was originally seen on the PlayStation in the first few months of the consoles released in 1995. 

And while you can't play through the actual games as such in this you can view the highlights where you have the direct commentary from barry himself overviewing and overlooking various elements from shots to various type of statistics calling out player names, teams and it's just the whole experience is very very reflective of its time but at the same time it was also very very realistic. 

It just made you feel like you were part of the whole experience and like you're watching something live on TV which back then was definitely a really cool feature. 

Yes games and management sims have evolved a lot since then but back during those early days of 3D games there was just something really kind of like when you look back at being very nostalgic that just you don't really get in games of today even with all the fancy graphics and shiny objects and so forth, it was definitely a different time and it was more of a fun time to experience all of these unique qualities in games. 

So with that many of the other features, the game was also playable with the likes of the PlayStation Mouse accessory if you managed to have it but even at that you can play through the game just using the standard controller. 

And with some really cool ideas behind the development of this game as well because the developers had originally worked on earlier premier manager games dating way back to 1992 and for this game, the developers also enlisted the writers of gold magazine and other fanzine editors and even football fans to also how to provide individual statistics and various elements to build up the players databases and player pricing and everything that goes with it that were kind of reflective of the time while the game was also endorsed by real life football managers at the time with Joe Kinnear, Harry Redknapp and Dave Bassett so it'll definitely tell you the marketing aspect behind this game. 

And even with research that I've even managed to find online which is quite crazy for a management sim and especially for a PlayStation game which even though management sims were considered to be quite popular on likes of PC and so forth but not as popular on the PlayStation because the only other alternatives that we had before that were the many likes of earlier entries with the likes of onside soccer that had basic management sim elements into it but you could also play the games. 

Now while that's not considered to be a great soccer game in its own right it definitely did have some unique early elements to those aesthetics but Premier Manager 98 is where management sims genuinely started to become popular on consoles and the game reportedly sold 44 000 copies in its first week of release which instantly made at the highest selling video game in the UK in July 1998 and it ended up being the fourth highest selling game in 1998 overall which when you think of it for a management Sim to be one of the best selling games on consoles is truly incredible when you really think about it. 

And even with that, the game received nothing but praise with critical reviews giving it really high reviews across the board both on PC and even the console version as it had a lot of up-to-date stats, it had a lot of very unique elements with all like different types of Premier League teams even from lower divisions like from division one and even conference league divisions and so forth. 

And you could interact and deal in transfers where you would have direct influence over players wages, team set up, team formations, you could literally control everything that you could do with a team and there was a lot of hidden elements as well that would throw up a few curve balls but also end up would work on your favour depending on different situations or depending on players that you bought or that you invested time and money into which was quite incredible. 

Even my own personal experience I did play this game a bit a good bit back in the day but it was actually my brothers and some of my friends, literally the lads would just sit for hours playing this game. 

From what I remember looking back during the summer months of 1998, the boys would always end up between playing this game and X-com Enemy Unknown. 

They would always be jumping between the two but they spent a lot more time on Premier manager almost to a point that I would end up have gone to bed but the boys were still not playing all night and even going back to even some funny stories we were also live in a home because I have four younger brothers and some of my mates used to stay over at the house during the summer months when we were all off secondary school or school or whatever and the lads would be still staying up and my dad would actually be getting up to go to work the next morning and the boys would still be playing so what the boys would actually do is they would turn the TV off or they put it on standby to make it look like as if the TV was actually knocked off on the wall because my dad would always come in to make sure that the power was always off on the wall so the boys would tricking me into thinking that everything was off. 

They were pretend to be asleep and then as soon as my dad would go back out to work, the boys would jump back up and start playing it again and this doesn't cater into the fact that the boys didn't even sleep the whole night at all and this was a regular thing throughout those summer months. 

I remember very well and the thing is now while I did play it as much it wasn't into it as much as the boys were, the boys really understood the whole dynamics and the whole features of the game whereas i kind of was more interested in sitting and watching and learning rather than playing themselves but one of the cool aspects that they found just through experimentation, they found by buying certain types of players could change the dynamic of the team. 

My brother was always a big United supporter and then my mate was a Liverpool supporter so they were between them would always picked between one of two teams to use from what I remember usually it was always Man United and the two played together during various transfers and so forth. 

But they managed to find it just through sheer luck and trial and error that there was one or two players that they bought from the likes of lower leagues or lower divisions. 

And from what I remember that's one of the players in particular that they bought was actually like a center-back or a defender, even in some cases there was one player that they bought was actually a goalkeeper and what happened was because in those games you could change the positions of where you played different players regardless of their qualities and what ended up happening is that the players would end up becoming Superstars literally instantly. 

They would take a defender that they had found and what happened was once they found this player they would go on to use them every time they replayed the game they keep buying this one player because they put him in a striker position and should end up scoring forty or 50 goals in a season every season to a point that his value skyrocketed and then they were getting tons of valuable offers from other teams, even from like different leagues outside of the UK in the game looking forward to spending 20, 30 million at the time which was serious money back then on this one player and the thing is he wasn't even an out and out striker.  

He was like a defender or a goalkeeper in most cases so that that was the whole dynamic and the really cool idea behind this that there was a lot of hidden elements and a lot of unique deals and hidden gems in the game as well that you wouldn't really find unless you really experimented and once the lads managed to figure out and find those select few players they took full advantage of it and to be honest it was very hard to even lose the game it actually made the game super easy for them. 

That's what was quite unique about it like even thinking back even for myself and more so as an outsider or a bystander just sitting watching the game, it was a lot of fun to see everything unfold even so much to a point that my dad ended up getting involved playing the game as well and sure once my dad got involved he was as bad as we were addicted to these type of games and this was more his thing because he loved watching likes of football growing up, he's a Tottenham Hotspur man and he loved watching match of the day on Saturdays and watching football whenever was on TV so for him to get to see something in real time that you could have some level of control on was pretty cool. So between my mates and my brothers and my dad would sit for ages playing this game. 

It was actually the one of the two few games that once the lads got on it I had no chance of getting on the computer so it was that was a rare occurrence that never really happened but yeah this was one of those games that I lost my power over that as they say but sure that's just the way things where but at the same time for me it was kind of a good thing because at least I could take a break although I didn't feel like a back then because I was itching to get at playing whatever game I was playing at the time and I couldn't wait for the lads to finish up. 

But yeah I remember the summer months of 1998, that was crazy because yeah even for the amount of times that I get to play the PlayStation once the boy's gone on it that was it but again that was it, they where great times so they will and that's why I love to share the memories of that because these games like that they do hold a lot of nostalgic memories even not just for me but for people that I'm close to as well the people I grew up with and generally if we do have discussions with games because we do talk a lot about that on our Gaming Podcast Channel, which if you haven't watched it I'll leave a link below to it where we always talk about it a lot of our combined memories of games growing up and there's a lot of really cool like stories and funny stories that we share over the years and to be honest games like this here like Premier manager 98 comes up in topics of the conversation quite a lot. 

Because there's so many dynamics and there's so many cool things about these type of games that you wouldn't have really looked upon and you wouldn't really see in games today but they were very influential back then. 

And it's just they do hold so many fond memories and it's always good to reflect in them, especially if you do like old school retro games, this is one of them out there this will bring back that sense of nostalgia and I'm sure myself and my brothers and that weren't the only ones that found this game to be popular. 

I'm sure there's plenty of others considering that it was one of the best selling games during 1998 in the UK clearly states that this game was popular across the board and I think it was definitely one of the best management games if not the best management game on the PlayStation pretty much I think ever at that point while there was sequel the premier manager 99 which was also another good game, I think it just didn't have the Mass Appeal or didn't hit that peak that 98 did. Premier Manager 98 definitely seems to have a lot more memories for a lot more players as such and while it doesn't have a lot of the intricacies that more updated like PC versions probably would have had at the time but this game was still able to hold its own even compared to those games even so much to a point that I would personally consider to be one of the best management sims that I've ever played. 

So its a lot of fun and if you do genuinely like football management sims plus if you like old school commentary from the legendary Barry Davis just to give you that hit of nostalgia to go back to the good days of football, I definitely recommend that you give this one a go for sure as there are some cool football games on the PS1, there's no data about it but even at that this game definitely stands up there with the best that the PlayStation had to offer at the time even though it has a different dynamic to it but it still definitely it did appeal to a lot of players back then. 

So I'm sure it does hold a lot of fond memories for many people out there so it's definitely worth revisiting in my book but at the same time I would also love to know your thoughts of this unique and iconic game for the PlayStation one and what did you think of it overall, could this quite possibly be the mass management game that you've ever played on the console or if in general? I'd love to hear whatever stories you do have in this game so be sure to share it in the comments below and be sure to keep watching to see more content on other racing games similar to Premier Manager 98 you can check out the blog where we will be diving into the iconic elements of these classic video games and as always keep those gaming memories alive...

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